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This study intends to examine the relationships between external knowledge sourcing (EKS), organizational ambidexterity (OA), and manufacturing performance (MP) in the context of large manufacturing firms within a dynamic environment setting. The research framework and derived hypotheses are grounded in the knowledge-based view (KBV) and dynamic capability (DC) theories.

A self-administered online survey was used in this study to gather data. Respondents were the operation leaders representing large manufacturing firms. The collected data were screened for invalid responses, and hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The study reveals that OA and EKS play key roles in achieving a better MP. Likewise, OA also mediates the relationship between EKS and MP.

Cross-sectional data were collected from large manufacturing firms within five focus sectors in Malaysia. A similar study can be conducted with more sectors of different contexts to confirm the findings.

Knowledge is critical for the firm to react to environmental dynamism, and the ability to manage it ambidextrously will enable the firm to enhance its performance.

This study offers empirical insights from the perspective of the large manufacturing firms in Malaysia, which are undergoing an Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) transformation. This study bridges the knowledge gap by revealing the value that EKS can facilitate MP, exploring OA as the prevalent factor and demonstrating how KBV and DC can be applied in this study.

Current open innovation (OI) and external knowledge search (EKS) research primarily shows a positive linear relationship between EKS and innovation at an individual level. However, organizational scholarship argues that excessive EKS may harm innovation. This study combines the knowledge-based view (KBV) and attention-based view (ABV) to articulate a nonlinear theory of EKS and innovation at the individual level.

The authors constructed a multi-sourced dataset covering 59,798 USA pharmaceutical patents spanning from 1975 to 2014 and employed negative binomial fixed-effect models to examine theoretical hypotheses.

We find a significant concave curvilinear relationship between EKS and innovation quantity as well as innovation quality at an individual level. An individual’s knowledge breadth and depth moderate the relationship between EKS and innovation, such that the threshold at which EKS has diminishing returns for individual innovation is higher for inventors with a broad range of knowledge and those with deeper expertise in the domain where they are innovating.

Managers should guide inventors toward a moderate investment of time and effort in EKS and should caution against over searching. Besides, managers should recognize that an inventor’s capacity for EKS is determined in part by their breadth of knowledge across various domains as well as the depth of knowledge they have in the knowledge domain where they are innovating.

We provide both parties with a clearer understanding of when EKS can begin to deteriorate an individual’s innovation performance why that deterioration occurs, and we also highlight two individual-level knowledge characteristics to take into consideration when deciding when to cease the EKS process.

This study provides a novel holistic understanding of OI and knowledge management for policymakers and organizations to nourish innovation dynamism and make the best of knowledge stocks in the community, which in turn will create endless power for sustainable social change and inclusive development.

This study contributes to OI theory by highlighting the non-linear nature of the relationship between EKS and innovation on an individual level. This represents a fundamental shift in theory on EKS and individual innovation by suggesting a major rethinking of how the two concepts relate, revealing the dark side of EKS in knowledge management if inventors engage in excessive EKS. Likewise, our study’s incorporation of the ABV informs KBV scholarship by highlighting the role of the limited attentional capacity of individuals in firm knowledge management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of firms’ features on innovation performance in Industry 4.0, focusing on the concepts of breadth and depth of openness in the innovation process.

Using data gathered from 96 firms active in Industry 4.0 (I4.0) in Italy, a Poisson regression analysis is conducted to investigate the relationship between the openness of firms’ innovation processes at the level of knowledge sources and their innovation performance in I4.0.

The results highlight the relationship between the level of openness and innovative performance in I4.0. In particular, the breadth of the openness of the innovation process of enterprises is curvilinearly related to innovation in I4.0, taking an inverted U-shape.

Managers of firms operating in I4.0 should consider openness as a strategic response to the knowledge requirements and risks associated with the innovation process in complex technologies.

Through the questionnaires administered mainly to highly qualified individuals, an original and unique database has been created with information on the openness of the innovative process and the innovation performances in I4.0.

This study investigates how firms build strong dynamic marketing capability (DMC) from open innovation (OI) to enhance the performance of entrepreneurial firms. Moreover, this study unfolds DMC's mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying inbound and outbound OI and performance relationships, respectively.

To test the research model and hypotheses, this study drew a sample of 251 firms operating in Malaysia using the time-lagged survey method. Structural equation modelling was used in this study to investigate the model relationships.

The findings of this study reveal the positive interplay between inbound OI (knowledge acquisition) and DMC. The outbound OI (knowledge exploitation) in this study is found to mediate the relationship between inbound OI and firm performance. In addition, while the DMC has a mediating effect in the relationship between inbound OI and firm performance, such a capability reinforces the positive relationship between outbound OI and performance.

This study provides a noble insight into the complex interplay between OI and entrepreneurial firms' performance by developing and testing an integrated framework underpinned by a knowledge-based view and dynamic capability theory. The findings highlight the significance of taking an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to better understand the determinants of entrepreneurial firms' performance in an emerging country context.

Firms are driven to ride on the digital wave in today’s open innovation ecosystem. This study aims to explore the effect of digital transformation (DT) on knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) firms’ innovation ambidexterity, namely, radical versus incremental innovation, respectively. Meanwhile, the authors evaluated the moderating role of the complexity of R&D collaboration portfolio (i.e. organizational diversity and geographic diversity) in the above relationships.

Using a panel data set of 171 Chinese listed firms in the information and communications technology services industry from 2010 to 2018, the proposed hypotheses were empirically attested.

It is found that DT has a positive relationship with radical innovation and an inverted U-shaped relationship with incremental innovation. In terms of the R&D collaboration portfolio, organizational diversity positively moderates the relationships between DT and innovation ambidexterity, respectively. The geographic diversity weakens the inverted U-shaped effect of DT on incremental innovation; however, its moderating role in the link between DT and radical innovation is not empirically verified.

Extant scholars mainly addressed the interplay between KIBS firms and their manufacturing clients, while this study reveals the different consequences of DT on KIBS firms’ innovation ambidexterity to highlight the role of KIBS firms is an independent and essential innovator in a knowledge-driven economy. Notably, the findings contribute to knowledge management (KM) and R&D literature by confirming the diversity of the R&D collaboration portfolio is a critical KM strategy for KIBS firms to develop and promote external knowledge resources.

In a context each day more global, a new paradigm has emerged – open innovation (OI) – which may be understood as an innovation strategy in which organizations use internal and external knowledge to leverage their business value, thus maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage. This article aims to contribute to understanding this phenomenon, suggesting an integrated vision of OI strategies.

This paper systematically reviews and analyzes a sample of 66 articles from Scopus and Web of Science databases related to open innovation strategies.

The results obtained enabled us to group the existing literature into six different clusters: (1) Performance; (2) Open business model; (3) Intellectual Property; (4) Knowledge Management; (5) Innovation; and (6) Culture. Furthermore, this study identifies the major research gaps and provides suggestions for future research.

The paper presents the main elements that interfere and interact in the innovation strategy providing a conceptual model that can be useful in understanding the phenomenon of open innovation.

Driven by the development of the global digital economy, knowledge management in industrial enterprises offers more possibilities for green innovation. Based on the perspective of external knowledge sources, this study aims to construct a panel regression model to explore the relationship between digital economy and industrial green innovation efficiency.

Panel data from 30 regions in China from 2011 to 2020 were selected as research samples. All data are obtained from national and provincial statistical yearbooks. Coupling coordination degree analysis, entropy method, panel regression analysis, robustness test and threshold effect test by Stata 16.0 were used to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results demonstrate the hypotheses and reveal the following findings: the digital economy is positively related to industrial green innovation efficiency and external knowledge sources, and external knowledge sources mediate the relationship between them. Moreover, based on the threshold test results, the digital economy has a double-threshold effect on industrial green innovation efficiency.

Based on the perspective of external knowledge sources, the proposed mediating mechanism between the digital economy and industrial green innovation efficiency has not been established previously, further enriching the research on the antecedents and outcomes of external knowledge sources. Moreover, this study estimated the direct influence mechanism and double-threshold effect of the digital economy on industrial green innovation efficiency from theoretical and empirical analysis, thus responding to the call of scholars and adding to existing research on how the digital economy affects the green transformation of industrial enterprises.

This study aims to study the moderating effects of private ownership and government support on the relationship between outsourcing and product innovation in entrepreneurial ventures in a transition economy.

The data of 10,296 Vietnamese entrepreneurial ventures from the four rounds of the survey conducted by the General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam to investigate the moderating effects of private ownership and government support on the association between outsourcing and entrepreneurial ventures’ product innovation performance. The Probit regression model is employed to estimate such associations.

Our research uncovered that the impact of outsourcing on the likelihood of product innovation is more significant for entrepreneurial operations characterized by a substantial degree of private ownership and government backing as opposed to those without.

The results of our research indicated that the resource-based perspective and extended resource-based view (ERBV) are essential in examining the impact of gaining resources or skills from external sources on the growth of entrepreneurial enterprises. These ideas have significance and importance not just in industrialized economies but also in countries undergoing transition. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurial enterprises should have the ability to manage a wide range of resources and make decisions about which activities should be handled internally and which should be delegated to other parties.

Our findings also imply that entrepreneurial ventures should be able to control many resources and choose which tasks should be performed in-house and which should be outsourced to third parties.

By adopting and leveraging the resource-based view (RBV) and extended resource-based views (ERBV), our study developed a theoretical model about private ownership and government support for moderate outsourcing’s impact on entrepreneurial innovation in a transition economy.

The prevailing view in the existing literature is that open innovations (OI) increase the innovative performance of enterprises. The author examines whether the same OI practices are equally important for sole entrepreneurs, micro firms, small firms, medium-sized and large enterprises in introducing radical innovations and which set of OI practices is best for a firm, given the firm's size.

In this study probit models were used on a sample of 915 innovative Serbian enterprises.

OI is important for all enterprises introducing radical innovations. However, not all OI practices are equally effective in each enterprise size group. The set of OI practices leading to radical innovations depends on the firm size. Cooperation with others is not important for sole entrepreneurs and micro and large companies in introducing radical innovations. Still, cooperation's role is predominant in small and medium-sized enterprises. Also, certain OI practices are important for all enterprises, whilst others do not contribute to radical innovations, regardless of the firm size.

Owners/managers can save considerably by avoiding the allocation of resources to OI practices that result in little to no contribution to radical product commercialisation. At the macroeconomic level, these findings can help policymakers create adequate (tailor-made) public policies to achieve innovation in each specific group of firms.

This study demonstrates that not all OI practices are equally important for achieving radical production solutions in each group of enterprises.

Understanding the role of corporate strategies in sustainability has become a hot topic for scholarly research. Meanwhile, firms strive to innovate and shape their positive image in the contemporary business arena. Past research has ignored investigating whether and how sustainability-oriented corporate strategies could drive innovation and firm image among external stakeholders. To address the said research gap, this paper examines the path through which sustainability-oriented corporate strategy and environmental regulation improve green corporate image and green innovation capabilities (i.e. green process and product innovation).

This study adopted a quantitative survey-based method. The online survey was adopted to collect data from employees working at the managerial level in the equipment manufacturing sector. The data collected from 343 managers that was complete in all aspects was used for empirical analysis using structural equation modeling. Direct and indirect relations were evaluated.

The findings reveal that sustainability-oriented corporate strategy and environmental regulation drive green innovation and green corporate image. Findings further show that external knowledge adoption underpins these effects of sustainability-oriented corporate strategy and environmental regulation.

The study delivers theoretical and practical understandings of the importance of sustainability-oriented corporate strategies to green corporate image and green innovation capabilities.